[OtterCoder]

Fascism, for the people who shape it as such, will be pushed forward by some of the kinds of people the article mentions. However, Germany was and is and always will be peopled by mostly reasonable, kind, stout folks, because most people everywhere are reasonable, kind, and stout.

Even the cream of a country can be goaded and led and pushed into fascism, as the tide sweeps across a frightened or depressed people. The soldiers of Germany had to be shown the horrors and crimes of their superiors in gory detail, and still they had to be marshaled by strict speech laws to prevent the resurrection of a horror that largely benefitted the masses.

[cmurf]

Compare how Germany was treated by the world after WWI, and after WWII. Big difference in treatment, and consequences for that treatment. Fortunately the lessons of WWI hadn't been forgotten when it came time to cleanup after WWII.

[lostlogin]

Even if a punitive approach had been taken, it would have been a very different post war period. Germany was utterly destroyed, beaten and occupied. In WW1 that wasn’t the case and while there had been massive loss of life, Germany was intact.